This chapter has been proof-read by: AnthonyL

First published on my wordpress: Here

-------------------

“My name is Nate, and I didn’t stay earlier because I wanted to know who I am dealing with before blindly walking into a possible trap. I hope you won’t feel offended by my lack of blind trust toward strangers” I decided not to lie while giving them as little information as possible about me.

It was possible someone among them knew me by name and could locate my hideout that way, so instead of Nathan, I decided to be Nate for now. “Hemm, yes, I guess you are right… My name is Camille.” The woman then answered but as she spoke, the whispering voice of a man could also be heard talking to her. “Ask how many are they, and what is their situation with food.” Said the man.

Before the woman began repeating what I had already heard, I quickly asked first. “How many survivors are there in your group?” As soon as I asked this, the radio became silent. Of course they hesitated to reveal how many they were. Revealing your numbers to a potential enemy is not something smart to do so I decided to try and reassure them first.

“No need to be so prudent, I already know where you are and your approximate numbers. (I kinda lied there, I had no idea how many they were.) If I had wished to kill you tonight, you would have been dead already. But instead, I decided to reveal myself to you. Isn’t that proof enough that I am not your enemy?”

The radio was still silent, but 30 seconds later the reply finally came through. “There’s 8 of us, how about you?” Eight she said… Sound credible, but it was a lot less than I was expecting. “We are one. I mean, I am alone…” I saw no point in lying about it at this point.

Their reaction was exactly what I had expected. “EHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!????? Have you been alone since the very beginning???????” Yep, predictable reaction. Since I had gone the honest route so far, I decided to continue with it. “Yes, since day one. I thought I was the only one who had survived… It’s been, an interesting ride so far.” I answered nonchalantly.

Alright I have to admit, since I was talking to a woman, I felt the need to try and sound cool. I usually don’t brag like that, but I still had survived many months in this hellish alien world on my own. Isn’t that worth bragging about? “N-no way… ‘Crowd noises‘*” They then said.

At this point they were all talking at the same time and I couldn’t hear anything, so I waited for them to calm down and clearly ask their next questions which I was already anticipating. “You must be somewhere very safe. Where are you? What about air purification? Is there enough space for more people? What about food?”

Once again, they all began talking on top of each others and it was all very chaotic, but a stern woman’s voice broke through the chaos and began to speak through the radio. I instantly began to wonder if she was their leader or something. Anyway, that woman sounded very bossy, she had also effortlessly taken over control of the radio.

“Hello? I’m Alice. Enough of this dilly dally, what these people want to know is if you can help us. We are being attacked everyday, also our generator died a few times already, forcing us to venture out to fix it. Each time we did, we lost some of our people. We are also going to starve soon, since no one wants to go out and get more food because those who did in the past, never came back alive. But you, you came and left with no apparent difficulties.”

Now that’s refreshing, talking to someone who’s being frank like that. “Understood, I will see what I can do for you. But forget about the safe location you think I have. I had a gas mask the entire time so I didn’t need air filtration.” That was the first blatant lie I told them, but I was ready to do everything in my power to hide the existence of my bunker.

“You asked us to be honest with you. Yet you are the one lying to us right now. None of us believe you could have survived alone without a safe place to live.” The woman who sounded mature enough to be in her fifties, suddenly sounded vexed and annoyed which made me panic a little. I didn’t want to get entangled in my lies so I decided to switch their attention to something else instead.

“We can survive here. I simply discovered the secret behind this world.” There was no way they wouldn’t be intrigued by these words. They would immediately forget about trying to locate my bunker. “Secret?” She then answered with audible curiosity in her voice.

“Yes, we can develop a resistance to whatever is poisonous in the air.” As I said that, various noises began to be heard through the radio. It was as if they were fighting among each other over the control of the radio. As to confirm my suspicions, the next answer came from the first woman I had spoken with at the beginning. She sounded quite calm and young compared to the previous lady.

“Resistance? You mean exposing ourselves to small dose of it regularly until our body can resist to it?” The young woman immediately hit the jackpot which was very surprising to me. Did they already know about it? I needed to make sure. “Yes it is exactly what I meant. I’m surprised at how fast you figured it out. May I ask how you immediately guessed it correctly?”

“Hemm sorry I didn’t tell you. I am a doctor.” Now that explain a lot of thing. They were in an hospital after all, so having doctors among them wasn’t that surprising after all. “Camille was it? Your profession makes you someone very important right now. Did anyone in your group ever get sick from the poison in the air?”

I was asking this because I remembered clearly how horrible my first time was. My guess was that surviving this first time was the key to the red air adaptation. “Y-yes, Robert, Marc and Alice got seriously ill because of it a while back. Most people don’t survive through it though.” Sigh, like I thought.

Since I was talking to a doctor, I decided to recount my experience to her. I told her how I had built my red air resistance, how building up this resistance only seemed to increase the amount of gas we could contain before feeling sick and that learning an expulsion technique was also necessary.

Obviously, she was skeptical at first but ended up sounding very interested and fascinated by my story, and since she was a doctor, she immediately began to come up with ideas that could facilitate the process and prevent them from getting too seriously sick. We spoke about ‘adaptation’ and theorized about how we could have ended up in a different world when she eventually affirmed having no idea where this ‘poison’ was coming from.

In my case I had suspected the red sun from the beginning so I was surprised they had not suspected it. But on the other hand, they probably couldn’t see the red mist yet and hadn’t made the link between the two. Glad to know something else they didn’t, I instantly blurted out the answer. “What’s poisonous in the air is some kind of gas. It is a gas coming from the red sun I think.”

I assumed her answer would be something along the lines of ‘Of course!’ but it was not what I got. “Red sun? What red sun?” She said instead. Now that was an unexpected answer. “Have you ever gotten outside?” That would explain why they didn’t know.

“Yes, some of us did… Why? What red sun?” My head was filled with confusion. I was simply speechless and unable to explain what the hell was going on. I needed to confirm my suspicions so my next question was; “What colour is the sky to you?” Her answer completely stomped me once again.

“Blue… Like it always has been. Are you feeling alright?” Now I was even more confused than before. They couldn’t see the red sun, and couldn’t see the red tint in the air making the sky appear purple. In my case, I had been able to see them both even before getting in contact with the red mist for the first time, so this didn’t make sense.

“No nothing, never-mind that. Anyway, be careful not to overdo it. As long as you haven’t learned the expulsion technique, it’s easy to die from this gas. How much longer can you hold with the food you have?” I wanted to help, but I had no intention of carrying them like dead weight. I will help as much as I deem necessary, but they will have to adapt and quickly start pulling their own weight.

“We are already rationing our food. We could eat everything we have left tonight if we wanted to.” Sigh, what a shitty situation they are in. I was annoyed but for some reason, I was happy. To be honest, it had been a while since the last time I had been this entertained.

Having a conversation with other people was really entertaining, especially if it was over the internet, phone or in this case, a radio. “I will try to make a quick trip tomorrow and bring you some food, but I’m warning you, if I find anything suspicious or if you have weapons on you when I come, I will turn around and never come back.”

I made sure they understood how serious I was by the tone of my voice and waited for the answer. “Okay, don’t worry. No weapons, no funny business. Promise. Sob* Sniff* T-thank you Nate. We can’t thank you enough.” I felt happy to hear that, but I couldn’t help but feel guilty since I still hadn’t actually done anything yet.

I spent the rest of the night talking with them and learned some of their names and professions.

-First was Camille Dufron, A 28 years old female doctor. (Very useful)

-Second was the stern lady, Alice Tremblay, female, 55 years old, geologist/gemologist/jewellery maker. (Who care about jewellery anymore.)

-Third was Marc-André Bureau, a 23 years old young man who’s a mechanic. (Useful)

-Fourth was Robert Arthur, a 41 years old male surgeon. (Very useful)

There were still 4 people I hadn’t talked to, but we had been talking for hours and decided to go to sleep and resume our conversation in person tomorrow. I was very nervous at the idea of meeting them, I even regretted telling them I was coming, but I couldn’t just leave them to die. From what they told me, they were over 60 in the beginning and were now only 8. No need to say, they were having a hard time.

I laid on my bed and stared at the ceiling for a while. Many things were going through my mind and I felt overwhelmed. Could they really not see the red sun? Would I walk into a trap tomorrow? Should I really go or not. But then, this intense moment of reflection abruptly got interrupted by my stomach which reminded me I hadn’t eaten in awhile. “Gurrlrlrlr*”

I decided to make some sidekick fettuccine alfredo and while the noodles were boiling, I filled the washing machine and began doing my laundry. I should normally be asleep right now but I didn’t feel tired at all. Actually I was way too nervous to sleep.

I ate my noodles and cleaned the dishes. Then I transferred my clothes to the dryer and drank a few sips of brandy from my personal bottle collection. After a few drinks, I went to bed but couldn’t find sleep. I kept turning on my bed, lost in thoughts as I was trying to imagine what tomorrow would be like.

I was finally drifting asleep when a sudden scream made me jump on my bed. “KYAaaaaaaaaa!!!Static* It’s here ag-Static* It got David!! Dav-Static* dead!!! Static* It’s-Static* Coming ba-Static*” I jumped on my feet and ran to the radio. “Hello? What is happening?!”

“I-it’s th-Static* Godzilla like mo-Static*er!!! IT’S DESTROY-Static* THE HOSPITAL!” Godzilla??? Hearing this, I immediately made the link between it and ‘shit mound-ster’. They had to be talking about the giant shit pylons monster living in town.

Feeling like they would all die if I didn’t do something, I rapidly began putting on my equipment. There was a chance this was a trap, but by the noises coming through the radio, I felt this was very real. Once I was finally dressed up, I grabbed a few boxes of respiratory masks, exited my bunker and ran to my front yard. It was raining heavily, everything was pitch dark and damp. Not a good time to go out like that, but I didn’t have a choice.

There, I selected a chevy impala from the bunch of cars parked in my yard and loaded my two propane tank bombs onto the passenger seats. All the cars I had brought to my home had their keys into the ignition, so it was quick and easy to get a new vehicle going.

I started the engine and smoked the tires the entire way up down my driveway. I drove as fast as I could, swerving around obstacles and barely keeping control of the car due to the wet road. I eventually reached the town but it was so damn dark that I could only see in front of me, where the headlamps were shining.

I blasted through town, passed the two intersections and finally arrived near the hospital. Not being able to see anything, I turned into the hospital parking area and finally saw it. It was around 100 metres ahead of me. My headlamps could only reveal its legs as the beast was simply too enormous.

This monster, was very similar to a t-rex on steroids. It was at least as tall as the four storey hospital building so it was no wonder they had called it Godzilla. The beast was on a rampage, digging its way into the building like an anteater digging into an anthill.

The beast had its face stuffed into a hole it had dug and kept trying to go deeper by making the building crumble. There were also many alien cockroaches, using this opportunity to infiltrate the hospital and try to get to the survivors first, but regular gunshots confirmed there were still survivors inside.

This was an apocalyptic scene and I would normally have assumed they were all dead but the gunshots and creatures’ behaviour confirmed to me that there were still people struggling to survive in there. I pulled the handbrake and got out of my vehicle, then I unloaded the boxes of respiratory masks, filters and my backpack and hid everything under a nearby vehicle.

I grabbed the two propane bombs completely covered with nails shrapnel and placed them on the hood of my car. Next I grabbed my pistol and shot through the front window. The giant beast was so busy that it didn’t even react to the noise.

I grabbed the two long fuses and threaded them through the bullet hole in the windshield down into the car. It was raining so much that I would never have been able to light them otherwise. I sat back in the car and punched the horn repetitively until the beast finally turned its attention toward me.

The giant creature turned its head and growled in a menacing manner. My headlamps were now shining straight into its eyes, offering a terrifying view of the creature. I got out of my vehicle once again, laid my 338 Lapua ‘hand cannon’ over the car door and took a shot at the creature’s neck region. BANG!*

“ROARRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!” The bullet entered it’s neck and exited right through the other side. Good news, this thing wasn’t armour plated like a dragon, but the beast was now really pissed and rapidly began staggering its way toward me.

I quickly reached inside the car and lit the 2 fuses, then began to run away while shooting a few more random shot at the creature’s belly. BOOOOOM!* My timing was a bit off and the bombs went off as the beast had just went past the car, but the explosion was so big and violent that hundreds of pieces of shrapnel embedded themselves into the creature’s legs.

“ROARRRRRRrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!” The giant Godzilla like creature fell face first to the ground, crushing a few cars in the process. It began to struggle and tried to get up again, but I was already laid in position. My next shot was aimed straight at one of its eyes and would hopefully reach the brain.

BANG!* Perfect shot! The giant monster instantly fell lifelessly on the ground and twitched a bit before finally breathing its last breath. “Pant* Pant* Pant* Pant* Did I really just do that?” I stood up, and stared at the giant corpse lit by the flames of the burning car I had used to come here. These propane bombs were some seriously dangerous stuff.

“Ouch..” A sharp pain invaded my left shoulder. I had a look and realized some of the shrapnel had grazed it. Thanks to my bullet proof equipment, I was bleeding but it was nothing life threatening. I fired a few more shots at the beast’s head to be safe, grabbed my backpack and ran toward the hospital.

As soon as I entered, I was instantly blocked by hordes of cockroaches trying to slip through some of the barricades. Occasionally, gunshots would be heard, most likely shot by the survivors killing the creatures who had managed to get through. I strapped my gun to my backpack and switched to my new katana. It was about time I tested how sharp this thing was.

With my pistol in one hand and a katana in the other, I made my way forward and began to clear out the corridors. Firing at those running away and slashing to pieces those charging toward me, I made quick work of these weaklings. I was swinging my sword so fast that my arms looked like blurry appendages.

I was sending guts and blood flying in all directions and it looked like they were being shredded to pieces by a lawnmower. At the end of the hallway from where I was, I spotted a bunch of cockroaches trying to run away but who had gotten stuck in a dead end. I couldn’t help but smirk at their predicament.

It was now their turn to feel the fear of being cornered. I began to leak a hurricane of red mist and instantly felt power surge through my entire body. The roached were making small wimping noises as I began to walk toward them with a killing glare in my eyes. I sheathed my sword and pistol and grabbed the vending machine to my left.

I effortlessly dragged it in front of me and gathered all my strength into my legs. I would have been able to lift it easily, but throwing such a big thing over my shoulder would have been physically impossible due to it’s size and shape.

I began to push the machine toward the dead end and rapidly accelerated. In a quick burst of power, I pushed the machine down the hallway, making it slide at high speed toward the panicking cockroaches. Squish*… The machine flew straight down the hallway and flattened them against the wall, instantly turning the creatures to paste.

I reloaded my pistol, grabbed my katana and kept on killing everything I could find. Is this what they call selfless courage? I wasn’t feeling fear or anything, all I felt was the need to protect those of my kind. That ‘shit mound-ster’ Godzilla was no where near comparable to a dragon after all and defeating it on my own had given me a massive amount of self confidence.

At this point, I was like the terminator, unstoppable and emotionless. The hospital rapidly turned into a monster graveyard as I plowed my way through the corridors. I was constantly leaking red mist because my shoulder was killing me, but luckily the ‘red mist doping’ helped me ignore the pain.

I continued to kill everything until I finally reached the barricade where I had last heard gunshots coming from. There were many creature’s corpses laid around and a few still alive which I quickly reduced to puree under my feet.

I stood there, wearing a gas mask, entirely clad in body armour, with my sword in one hand and a pistol in the other. I was panting and trying to catch my breath back, my body was entirely covered in blue blood and other gross stuff. Blood and pieces of monsters were falling from the ceiling, creating the most horrifying rain one could imagine.

Two men were staring at me from the other side of the heavily damaged barricade and weren’t saying anything. One of them seemed young, in his early twenties while the other seemed in his forties. They were both holding shotguns and wearing oxygen mask usually meant for patients. These mask were connected to oxygen tanks strapped to their back with ropes. Quite the smart idea I had to admit.

I stared back at them for a seconds and sheathed my sword and pistol back to my belt. As I did so, the two men lowered their shotguns and kept staring at me with agape mouths. One of them eventually broke the silence as I turned around to leave. “N-Nate?? Is that you?”

I stopped and slowly turned around. I then nodded and made a hand gesture for them to follow me. They were obviously reluctant to cross their barricade but ended up following behind as I began to nonchalantly walk away. We walked down the main corridor where I had killed at least a hundred cockroaches. The two men remained silent while staring at each others the entire way.

After a minute or two, we finally exited and arrived at the parking area where I had single handedly brought down Godzilla earlier. When the two men saw the giant carcass, they began to back away in fear. Seeing them so afraid, I began to kick the giant corpse to show them there was no danger anymore.

The two men were looking at me as if I was the most inexplicable thing they had ever seen. “Where are you bringing us?” Suddenly asked the older man. “I brought stuff for you, the least you can do is help carrying it.” I then answered while pointing at a few boxes hidden under a car.

The young man walked up to me and offered me a handshake. I gently grabbed his hand while being careful not to crush it as he introduced himself. “I’m Marc-André, thank you very much for saving us.” Then the second man approached me to do the same thing which made me feel very awkward. “What the hell are you? How did you manage to kill this giant beast? Did you bring a rocket launcher or something?”

It was dark and raining outside so I didn’t feel like having a conversation about that. “Let’s do this later, we have more urgent things to do. For now carry this inside, I’ll be right behind you.” The two men nodded and grabbed the boxes as I walked toward the giant carcass.

Once again, this thing had red blood. It was the second creature I had came across which had red blood like ours. There was so much meat in this creature that I felt horrible to see it going to waste. Sadly, my two freezers were already full and the other survivors wouldn’t be able to eat it because of its high ‘red mist’ content.

I took my sword and stabbed the creature’s scaly skin. Unlike the dragon, it was not especially hard. It should actually be just a bit tougher than a crocodile hide. Hopefully this dead body would keep other monsters away like the dragon had done for me. Well, unless it attract something even bigger.

“Hoooooo red meat? Can we eat this?” The voice of the young man came from over my shoulder. I turned and saw him licking his lips like a starving beast. The older man wasn’t any better. These people were visibly starving but I knew that eating this would kill them. “Yes and no. This meat contain a huge amount of this poison you are struggling with. You can eat that only after developing a good resistance to it.”

“Fucking hell” Said the younger man. The two men seemed totally dejected by my answer. “Are you sure?” Then asked the older man. “I almost died once because of this… If you want to grab yourself a steak and die from it, do as you please.” Next I inspected its claws and teeth and came to a conclusion, this was not the creature which had shredded the dragon corpse to pieces.

This was worrying but I didn’t have time to think about it. I had just went through hell again and just wanted to get my visit here over with. I was happy to have saved the survivors but wasn’t enjoying being in their company after all. Leaving the giant corpse behind, I walked back to the hospital with the two starved men in tow.

“MARKKKK!!! ROBERT!!!!!?????” A feminine scream came from the hospital as we were heading there. “We’re alright!! Nate came and saved us!” Then said the older man while patting my shoulder like a proud father. “Ouch!*” That idiot had just tapped on my injured shoulder making me weep in pain.

This was bad, I instinctively began to leak a bit of red mist to stop feeling pain. I couldn’t break down, I couldn’t show my shameful side to these people who are counting on and looking up to me. I needed to appear strong and invincible. “Eh? Hey! You’re injured!! Quickly come with me.”

From what the woman said, he should be Robert, the 40 something years old surgeon. There should be no one in this world better than him to look at my injury, so I silently followed behind him. Once we reached the collapsed area of the hospital, I finally saw the woman whose voice was still unfamiliar to me.

She had a mask over her mouth and nose but at first glance it was obvious that she was seriously beautiful. A bit on the skinny side but they had been starved for a long time so it was to be expected. We entered and walked through a labyrinth of corridors and barricades. Marc and the unknown girl stayed behind and began to fix the barricades as Robert the surgeon and I kept walking toward their living quarters.

A minute later, we finally arrived at the heart of the hospital. There was some sort of quarantine plastic sealing the hallway that had a sealable sticky zipper in the middle as doorway. Robert opened the hole and asked me to hurry through before too much red mist leaked in.

We both entered and Robert quickly sealed back the entry. He then asked me to sit on a chair while he was going to get his medical tools. I sat and soon realized that if I kept leaking red mist to overcome pain, I would also contaminate the air of this safe area. From now on I didn’t have any other choice than tolerate the pain.

I raised my head and had a look around. It was a corridor with many doors leading to rooms. I managed to hear Robert talk from another room and saying to the other that it was now safe and that I had came to save them. Feeling stupid to wear a mask inside, I removed it and attached it to my belt.

I tried to remove my top armour but it seemed to be stuck at the shoulder area. On further inspection, I had a nail stuck in my shoulder bone, holding my body armour in place. “Crap…” Luckily there was a surgeon capable of fixing this with me. “Whispers~~~~~*”

Hearing whispers I diverted my attention away from my shoulder and had a look around. Four people were staring at me without saying anything as if I was an animal in cage. This feeling of being the centre of attention was truly terrifying.

A young woman around 5”6 tall with blond hair and blue eyes immediately ran to me after noticing my injury. “Oh my god, that must be incredibly painful…” By the voice I immediately recognized her. She was the female doctor I had spoken to on the radio. She was pretty looking, but god she stank. Actually, they all stank and looked dirty as well. “It’d be better if I could pull the nail out…”

She had a quick look at it and answered with good news. “It’s stuck near the AC joint in the acromion bone so no artery should have been touched. But it’s stuck deep in the bone, we will need tools to extract it.” This was all I wanted to know. If there was no danger in pulling it out, then I wanted this thing out of me now.

I grabbed the nail with the tip of my fingers and effortlessly pulled it out under the incredulous eyes of Camille. “H-how did you..?” Before she could finish her question, Robert came back with a bag full of all the things he judged necessary to patch me up.

Finally nail free, I was able to remove the top of my body armour and shirt. Camille and Robert couldn’t help but stare at my physique with big round eyes. Yea I knew how they felt, I couldn’t help but stare at myself in the mirror as well. I was not big, but my muscles were splendidly developed.

My new life style had also made me lose a lot of body-fat making me look ripped as hell. I might have imagined it but I could swear I saw Camille’s cheeks turning red. Robert the surgeon inspected me and confirmed that no important blood vessels had been touched and that I only needed a few stitches.

As Robert was about to begin the stitches, Marc and the still unknown woman came back after having consolidated the barricades. “Oh my~~~~ Teehee*” She then said while devouring me with her eyes. I could clearly see that Marc wasn’t pleased by her reaction. Were they together? Meh, I didn’t care.

I was currently shirtless and being observed by 7 strangers. I was beginning to panic when luckily, Camille and Robert asked everyone to leave the room and give us a bit of privacy. When it was finally just the three of us, Robert approached me with his needle and thread.

“Ummm.. Urgggggg .. What? URGGgggg!…” Robert seemed troubled and Camille had a giant frown on her forehead. “I-I can’t pierce your skin… The needle just bent… What are you made of?”